


Some Assembly Required

by plinys



Series: For science. You monster. [4]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-05 04:37:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before they were monsters and machines they were men and women who believed that science could change the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cosette

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of the prequel type stories for my "For Science. You Monster." AU.  
> ( Its a portal AU, and not as cracky as it sounds. )  
> I plan for this to be a bit of a set up for what happened to certain characters before the events of the AU started. 
> 
> The first one up is Cosette's story!

She’s been wringing her hands over the news for the past few days, trying to find way, some option that could get her out of it. She had seen the facility, the machine that was to be her new home, every nightmare she had was about that thing and wondering what it would be like on the other side of it. 

“I’m not sure that I want to live forever,” she said over dinner that night, her fork shifting the overly processed food across her plate in order to disguise the fact that she wasn’t eating it. It was flavorless and bland, but even if it had been the best food in the world she probably couldn’t have eaten it. 

When no response came she dared to look across the table at where her father sat, he had stopped eating as well, so she took that as he hint to continue. There was no backing out now. “There’s still so much that I want to do, so much I want to see. I’ve never even seen anything outside of this facility.”

“Cosette, please, not now.”

“And why is that,” she mused, “Why do I have to stay down here and now all of this?”

At this rate she would never leave the facility. She had grown up here, in the children’s center, before she had been adopted by the doctor, and she loved him for that she truly did, but sometimes she wondered what it was like out there beyond these gleaming walls. There was a world out there, she knew there was. Marius had told her about it, during one of their many chats, he told her about the sun and the ocean and all the things that she longed to see. He told her about freedom, a freedom that she would never get to feel if she did what her father asked of her. She was a free spirit at heart and she longed to see that world.

“I’m only looking after you, I swore to your mother that I would protect you and this is the best protection that I can offer.”

There it was more questions left unanswered, no matter how many times she asked he would never tell her. She couldn’t even remember her mother. Had she been a kind person? But then why she would have just left? 

“Protect me,” Cosette said slowly a hint of bitterness rising into her voice, “To live as one these machines for the rest eternity, sometimes I think I would rather die.”

She didn’t miss the way he flinched back at her comment, and she knew it was far too harsh. The machine had originally planned to have been built for him, but his health was failing him faster than their science could stop. That was why they had changed it to fit her. So that science could continue.

How could she be so selfish, when she looked into the eyes of the man that had raised her and saw his pain reflected back in them, “I don’t mean that, Papa, please forgive me,” Cosette said softly reaching across the table to take his hand in hers, “You’ve been nothing but kind to me. I,” she paused forcing the words out as she made her final decision, “I will do it, if it will put your heart at ease.” 

 

\- - - - 

Cosette had received the news earlier. They were supposed to have begun the transfer process later that day. She hadn’t told Marius yet, she just couldn’t. She had planned on writing a letter; it would be easier that way wouldn’t it? She had never been good at goodbyes…

But then she had heard the strangest of news, that maybe she wouldn’t have to anymore. 

There was a backup that her father had listed down, an alternate. She couldn’t understand why he had never told her that somebody else could take her place instead. Maybe he would have, had there been more time. 

“But I don’t understand, Papa wanted me to be the one to-“

“But he didn’t know did he,” the other girl replied, brushing her dark hair out of her eyes, “about you and Marius.”

Of course he hadn’t. 

How could she have told him? He would never have understood, and what then would have become of Marius. She had seen people who disappeared and were never heard from again within the walls in which she grew up. She couldn’t have bared the thought of having lost him. He was the one good thing she had. 

But that didn’t explain how she had known, “How do you-“

“Marius told me.”

They were friends. Cosette knew this; they worked in the same department. Surely she had seen Marius sneaking off and had asked, no matter how secretive they had tried to be there were others that knew.

“If I do this I lose him, don’t I,” Cosette said finally. She already knew the answer and it broke her heart to think about it. After all, how could she expect him to love a machine, when she surely would not have been able to love herself?

“That’s why I’m going to do it for you,” she said a bit too quickly.

“Oh Eponine, I couldn’t let you do this,” she said softly, but even as she said the words Cosette already knew that she would let the other girl. They had grown up together, they were friends, and her friend was willing to give up mortality for her. There was no way she could refuse Eponine’s offer, and honestly she didn’t want to refuse it. 

“We’re friends aren’t we?”

“The very best.”


	2. Eponine

“I hacked the system easily enough, and the poor girl won’t be able to refuse you. Remember she still thinks that you’re her friend, she will fall for it in a second and then we will be at the top of the facility.”

“Is this really a good idea?”

“Eponine, my child, just think, all of this will be yours now. I only ever wanted the best for you.”

She wanted to believe that she really did, but she knew it was a lie. Her parents weren’t looking after her, they were looking after their own goals, and to them she was just a stepping stone on the way to that goal. 

Then again, why should she stay like this?

The only person she had ever loved wouldn’t pay attention to her anymore; all he had eyes for was his golden love, the princess of Aperture.

Without his love why she could bother to stay like this, there was nothing for her to look forward anymore.

Wasn’t it about time something went her way for once?

\- - - - -

She wanted to be the one to tell them, she was their friend after all. It wasn’t like she missed their worried looks when she clicked through her emails nervously waiting for the day when the news would finally arrive that Cosette realized what was going on and she was to be put into the machine instead.

Then again, maybe it was better if her friends didn’t know. It would be too hard to explain. It was better that they didn’t know about the person behind the screens. 

They wouldn’t have understood anyways. 

\- - - - - 

“You can’t tell anyone,” she insisted for the fourth time that day, watching again as he nodded to tell her that he wouldn’t. She’d already made him promise just as many times earlier. 

The scientists didn’t want anybody to know what the situation was, it was on a need to know basis. After all, the employees were just to think that it was another one of the company’s robots, if they knew what they were doing to her, surely they would have had a problem with it. She was forbidden to tell anyone, but she couldn’t just not say anything to her little brother. 

She owed the kid that much.

He was like her, both had grown up in the child’s center at the facility, neither knew anything much about the outside world. Sometimes Eponine could still remember visions of the sky from when she was just a child, but that had been far too long ago, and it was something she would never see again. 

“Do you really have to do this?”

“Well, somebody has to and it might as well be me,” she said a bit reluctantly reaching up to smooth his hair back from his eyes.

The little boy looked conflicted for a second before he spoke up once more, “you know, I’ll always look after you right?”

“Isn’t that supposed to be the other way around, I’m the one looking after you,” Eponine teased – their parents had all but forgotten them with the way they were involved in their work, but they had each other and that was what mattered, “you so little, how could you look after anyone?”

“When I’m bigger I mean, I’ll look after you. I promise,” he said sternly before holding out his pinky for what was surely meant to be another pinky promise. Eponine only hesitated for a moment before she too leaned forward and slipped her finger in between his.

It would be nice having somebody look after her for once.

\- - - - 

“So how exactly does this all work,” Eponine asked her eyes gazing over the equipment in the room. It was made up like one of the relaxation chambers that they used for people that were going to be put through testing but where a bed would have been there were instead a pile of cords and wires that all connected to some sort of central port. 

“It’s a bit hard to explain,” the scientist in charge said. He said it in a condescending way, as if he didn’t believe a girl like her was capable of understanding any of this. 

It took everything inside of her to resist mentioning the fact that she had been at this facility far longer than he had. In this case it was easier to play nice.

“Try me,” she finally managed to get out through gritted teeth.

He hesitated for a moment, before nodding to himself as if he had just realized something, “well basically we’re going to put this here over your eyes, which will give you completely vision of the facility and then hook you into the main frame. It should be relatively painless.”

Relatively.

“Has it been tested before?”

“No,” he said nervously, “you’d be the first.”

Great. 

\- - - - 

_Nobody ever appreciated you. It’s always sweet little Eponine._   
_They only care about you when they need you to do something for them._

They should have tested it on somebody first, because nothing can explain the rage building inside of her. It’s a flaw in the devise’s design, the way there’s now a voice in the back of her mind taunting her: a voice that points out all of her flaws and all the ways that she’s been wronged. It shows her everyone that has ever wronged her, how unfair it all it, how it’s their fault.

Her fingers itch to flip a switch and extinguish what’s left of their lives. To test, and test, and test.

Maybe that was why he had wanted Cosette to be the one to do this? What anger could she have inside of her?

Nothing compared to the anger that Eponine had tried to push down every single day, but now that anger was coming back in tenfold and what could she do to stop it? 

\- - - - 

_Look how happy they are. They’ve all but forgotten about you, haven’t they?_   
_Have they ever thanked you? Without you none of this could have happened._   
_He never would have loved you anyways. Who could love a monster?_   
_He was just using you. You were just another tool. Who hasn’t used you?_

She’s so angry that she couldn’t help it. It made it worse that she can see almost everything in the facility. She doesn’t sleep anymore, she just stays there trapped in her own mind, and watching, and waiting, and the anger just built until she couldn’t control it anymore.

In the end it’s so easy to do it, to flood the eighth floor. 

Neurotoxin. 

Just like that they were dead.

It would take years and losing her place at the helm to realize what a mistake she had made, killing her only friends in the world. She would never be able to forgive herself.

However, in that moment, even after the scientists in charge flipped her switch and tried to fix her, she was forced to watch those last two minutes over and over again, seeing what she was done, and the voice in the back of her head was proud of her.

“If I can’t have him, then nobody can.”


	3. Jehan

“We have to get back to work,” Jehan half-heartedly whined. 

They really should. Their break wasn’t for that long and, as much as Jehan didn’t mind putting off work in order to make out like hormonal teenagers in a supply closest, they did actually have work to do. Last time they had been late back from break their supervisor had been less than please and Jehan wasn’t sure that he really wanted a repeat of last time.

Though the way Courfeyrac pressed up against him certainly made him consider how bad it could possibly be if they were late one more time. What was the worst that could happen?

“That’s up for debate,” Courfeyrac mused as he continued peppering kisses along the side of Jehan’s exposed neck, relishing in the way his lover squirmed beneath it touch. If only they had more time he would do so much more than just kiss him.

“I’m serious,” he replied in an indignant voice, before grinding his hips forward, even though it counter acted the point that he had just made. 

“If you were serious you’d stop me,” Courfeyrac teased before leaning forward to capture the poet’s lips in his own, his hands going immediately to Jehan’s waist and loosening the button on his work slacks. It only took a second before he had successfully undone them.

“We don’t have time,” Jehan insisted, pulling back for a second, but the look in his eyes gave away the fact that he was long since the point of caring. 

“Well, then I’ll just have to be quick,” and with that he slipped his hand inside his lover’s waistband, allowing no further discussion on the matter, not that Jehan could have formed a cohesive debate if he had tried. 

Which he hadn’t. 

\- - - -

What’s the worst that could happen? 

Hadn’t they joked about this the day before?

But there it was as clear as crystal written out with the company masthead in the corner.

_Selected for testing._

They had left the letter in his employee mailbox, for a company whose main goals were science they had gone old school on this one.

Before he had even realized it he was crying, a tear rolling off his cheek and onto the paper smearing the words that read out his situation – his fate. His terrible, terrible fate. 

And he just collapsed against the row of mailboxes, the letter falling from his numb fingers, as he pulled his knees up to his chest and let the sobs overtake him.

He had seen the testing; he knows firsthand what they do to these people, because he’s one of the developers. He supposes it’s almost poetic how ironic it is. 

When Courfeyrac finds him like that an hour or so later he all but melts into the other man’s arms. No matter how many times he’d tried to insist that he wasn’t delicate, he had never felt more breakable at that moment than in any other moment.

\- - - - 

“This is my fault.”

“No,” Jehan said desperately leaning his head against his lover’s shoulder. 

He knew what he meant without even having to explain it, and it wasn’t like Jehan hadn’t considered it, of course he had. It was the logical conclusion when he looked at it objectively, but he hated to do so. 

“Yes it is,” he said with a bitter edge to his voice, “I-“

“Stop it, please,” he whispered his voice cracking over the words, “don’t you dare blame yourself.”

That was the one thing he feared even more than whatever testing he had been selected for, because he couldn’t bear the thought of Courfeyrac tearing himself up over this. He would be the type to, to blame himself, and that would change him. He was such a good person and he needed to stay good. He could do so much, if he just kept on believing, but somehow Jehan knew that when he left in the morning he would be leaving behind a different man. 

\- - - - 

“It shouldn’t take more than an hour or so and you’ll be back to work as normal,” the person in charge had said his pen tapping against his clipboard nervously as he spoke. 

He should have noticed that they were lying to him, there were all the signs there, from the way they fidgeted when he asked the questions about it or the nervous tapping of pens, but Jehan had been too relieved by the news. He had honestly thought that this would have worked, that he would have been able to go back to things as normal, and everything would have been alright. He couldn’t imagine why they would have bothered to lie. 

“Okay, when do we start?”


	4. Courfeyrac

Half of the time he felt like he was going through some sort of haze, ever since…

He was having a hard time focusing on his work and he knew that it showed. His performance was down and had he been forced to take that an aptitude test now he was sure the results would have been unfavorable, but could they really blame him? 

His friends were dropping like flies. 

He felt guilty about a lot of things lately, and not just his poor job performance. After all, hadn’t he been the one to help Marius get a job down here? (And now look how it had ended up for him.) Then there was the situation with Jehan. He was pretty sure that he didn’t even want to know what had happened, but it didn’t stop him from being tempted to ask one of their resident hackers. (R had always offered to look for him in the system, but every time he had turned him down knowing that it would be too much to deal with.)

At one point he had tried to leave the facility. He hadn’t really thought about it, but it had been months since they were allowed out. When he had gone to where the lifts were he had been informed that there was paperwork to be filed out before he could get permission to leave.

He had to fill out paperwork to request to quit his job – it was bullshit really. 

The paperwork sat like a weight on the edge of his desk, still not filled out.

\- - - - 

He had been one of the scientists that backed the personality core project, so he found it almost ironic when he got his summons for testing. 

He knew how it was supposed to work, the basics, he had helped design that, but the project had taken new leaps and turns since he had left. 

Honestly, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

Courfeyrac had always thought that if he got called for testing it would be the worst day of his life. That he would panic. The only feeling that he felt when he got his letter was relief, because if things didn’t work out then at least they’d be together.

He had already experienced the worst day of his life.

\- - - - 

The other scientists are going through the debriefing process, but it’s all things that Courfeyrac already knows so he tunes them out. He can tell that even they’re finding it a waste of time to explain somebody who knew the project so intimately. 

They hand him his folder at some point, and it’s there that his whole world starts to freeze and shut down at once, because he recognizes the signature that sent him to his fate. He had always thought that it was random selection based on the results of their aptitude tests, but how could that be. Surely, if this was not done on purpose his friend would have tried to stop it, before he signed Courfeyrac’s life away.

Then again, what were friends, when it came to science?

\- - - - 

“The program makes a mirror of your personality and projects in onto the core.”

“You’ll be back to normal in no time.”

“It will only hurt a like bit, like being shocked.”

“If all goes well you should be back to work in a few days.”

But what if he didn’t want to go back to work?

\- - - - 

“Am I dead,” were the first words he asked when he found himself awake again.

“Not exactly.”

He couldn’t feel his body – he couldn’t feel anything. For a second he panicked. How badly had things gone wrong? Was he now paralyzed? A fate that would keep him here as they tested on him, a fate perhaps worse than death?

“Just as we thought, your human body has died,” the scientist said, “but we’ve give you new life, your subconscious will remain here in an immortal form.” 

Just as they thought, because they had known all along that this would happen. 

They weren’t just mirroring personalities; they were taking life away and sticking it in the vessel. 

The personality cores. 

\- - - -   
Years and years had given him time to accept his fate, to do his job to the best of his ability, and let the numb whirling in the back of his mind tell him to keep being chipper. They had tried to modify him, to take out all the bad points of his personality, but the scientists had long since died. 

Sometimes he still wished for that fate.

\- - - - 

He doesn’t recognize him at first. 

Honestly, Courfeyrac was just thankful to find somebody that was alive – somebody that could hopefully lead him out of the facility. He hadn’t even looked at the records that went with the room, as soon as he had found a living subject he took his chance without looking back.

Still, there was something that nagged at his brain as he watched the subject jump about and shoot portals. There was something in that likely brain damaged subject that seemed so familiar.

It wasn’t until he heard the voice that he recognized it from all those years ago.

And maybe there was a small part of him that hoped he was wrong, which was why he had to ask:

“Random question, do you happen to have a name?”


	5. Combeferre

“I need you to sign this,” was a common statement in their department, anybody that worked with them knew how it went. 

Enjolras was the leader of their group, the scientific prodigy who would run himself into the ground for the sake of science, but it was really Combeferre, his right hand man, who made sure that everything was running smoothly. He was the voice of reason in the group, the one that everybody turned to for advice, and the one who always seemed to know the answers. He was also the only one patient enough to do all of the paperwork for the department. Everyone else just used to put it off till the last minute and then beg for his help, but about a few months into working with them Combeferre had found it far more efficient to do just do the work himself and then get it signed. 

Especially when it came to his best friend. 

Though this time was different, this time had Enjolras actually stopped to look at what he was signing he would have likely refused, but Combeferre knew that he wouldn’t, because they were friends, and he was one of the few trusted people here. What a mistake that was…

 

\- - - - 

Combeferre had noticed something wrong with the programming for GLaDOS before anybody else had, he had also realized there was nothing that they could do to fix it would out fully shutting down the facility. 

That was why he came up with a backup plan a fool proof way to make sure that all of his friends made it through this alive. 

He had been just a bit too late when it came to Marius. 

Though if anyone had thought that Jehan being called for testing was a random happenstance then they were wrong. 

Really it was all for their own good in the end.

\- - - -   
“Don’t forget that you need to reschedule your aptitude test,” he said in a voice that barely betrayed his hidden intentions, but he watched as the other guy just shrugged him off.

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Grantaire had said, “The people who take those tests get called for testing, I’m not as dumb as I look.”

That was the problem though. If he had just gone along with the masses this would have been so much easier, but of course, that could never happen. Being smart was an occupational hazard in a place like Aperture Science, particularly people willing enough to rebel against the system. It was so much easier to pretend to blend in, but as Combeferre looked around at the group that he called friends he knew one thing for certain: these people were not the type to just follow along with everyone else.

\- - - -

Courfeyrac getting called for core testing was planned, it wasn’t his signature on the paper, but it was his plan. To protect his friends. It was tested immortality and once this mess was over he could wake them up again.

Enjolras getting called for testing was not according to plan. In fact, it was the wrong sort of testing, it was the type where people actually died. 

In fact, it was the one thing that he had never predicted, but he supposed in the end it made sense. 

Some people really were just too smart for their own good.

\- - - - 

“I know what you’re doing,” she said in an accusing voice.

“Do you now?”

“I do. I can see everything in the facility, do you really think that I would let something like this happen right before my eyes.”

“You haven’t tried to stop me.”

There was a beat where she said nothing, so he continued, “is that why you called me here?”

“No, I don’t plan on stopping you.”

“Thank you?”

“You have till Friday,” she said after a moment.

“What happens on Friday?”

“Just trust me that you don’t want to be awake to see it.” 

\- - - - 

“Grantaire, wait,” Combeferre said, his eyes flashing to his watch to check the time one last time. Only two hours till midnight, “I need you to go into Sector 8C, there’s a wall offline and the whole thing needs to be rerouted.”

He was taking a chance here, a chance on something that might not even work, but what other chance did he have. The other guy had never actually bothered to take his aptitude tests, so there was really nothing else that he could do. Combeferre could only hope that this would actually work. 

“That’s in the restricted sector, I don’t have clearance.”

He was a hacker, for god’s sakes he could have given himself clearance if he really wanted to, but Combeferre didn’t have the time to argue about it. Instead he pulled his own Access Card from around his neck and put it into the other guy’s hands. “I need this done immediately.”

“You’re not serious, right? My shift ends in fifteen minutes, that will take at least five hours.”

“Then you best get started right now.”

As much as Grantaire grumbled about doing the job, Combeferre was sure that he would thank him later, when he realized what he had really done.

\- - - -   
It had taken an hour to herd everyone into the core transfer room, fifteen minutes to explain that something bad was going to happen, and ten minutes to hook everyone up into a deep sleep machine and an associated personality core. 

They would all be off until somebody decided to manually wake them up, but this was the only way to make sure that they made it through whatever Eponine, no GLaDOS, was planning. 

It was either the deep sleep or the _deep sleep_ , he had liked to think that he had picked the better of the two options.

Though only time would tell. 

\- - - - 

It was the shot of a turret gun, or some sort of rigged up one that had woken his core up. The shot of the gun hitting off the metal surface and stirring him into action. It was there that he saw it: the boy that had grown into a man fighting with the man that had grew into a shadow of what he was, while the one who would change it all set the game into motion and freed the girl trapped in the machine.

Finally, after all those years, they were going to put this story to a close. He just had to make sure it happened before things got worse.


End file.
